We need Daniel
by lostandfound007
Summary: I was reading LSgrimm91's AU story, Meet You on the Other Side, and thought, what if Sam had met Daniel in the coffee shop and convinced him to come? This is my firs try. Enjoy! Rated T for mild language
1. The Coffee Shop

**This work is based off of LSgrimm91's story Meet you on the other side.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, and I'm not making money off of it. The coffee shop idea isn't even mine, it came from LSgrimm91.**

_Chapter 1_

_0948h,_  
><em>Saturday, 11th February 1996<em>

Ow. Ow. Ow...

Sam sighed and continued to draw a circle on her temple with her thumb. After three days at home, she had developed an awful - and persistent - headache. So after downing two Tylenol and finally closing her laptop, her main focus was on enjoying the rustic appeal of the Agia Sophia Coffee shop. She has always loved the smell of fresh, hot coffee. It felt like a library, with the walls of books around her and the deliberately hushed tones of its clients.

"Doctor Sam Carter?"

Great.

She waited a moment before looking up at the man who had addressed her. She didn't recognise the blonde man before her, so if he wanted to talk to her specifically, he must have followed her. She doubted he was here by accident.

"Who wants to know?" She quirked her head. The man gestured to the seat across from her with the folded sunglasses in his hands. The look she gave told him he was not welcome.

"Detective Pete Shanahan, Denver PD."

She kicked the chair opposite under the table, pushing it out as a way of reluctantly inviting him to sit. He took little notice and sat down as she closed the book she had been reading.

"Nice place. Bit isolated," he offered her a charming grin, "but nice."

If it wasn't for the 'stalker vibe' she was getting off of him, she'd have smiled back. To be fair, he wasn't the ugliest human to walk the Earth.

"Something I can help you with, Detective?" Sam laced her fingers on the table diplomatically. Shanahan turned his head towards the nearest window, his eyes drifting the nearest table where a couple was engrossed in conversation.

"You know, I was actually here on assignment. I was giving the CSPD a hand on a case," he waved his own hand dismissively, "I was due to head back yesterday morning. Anyway, Thursday night, I'm having a drink at this bar down south and I overhear these two guys talking."

He leaned forwards and planted an elbow on the table.

"I reckon they'd had a few too many, but one of them mentioned the fact that two people had died where he worked." He cocked his head, "Naturally, I was curious."

"Fascinating." Sam tried to sound nonchalant, but it was difficult when she had been directly involved in the events leading to those deaths. If it was even the same incident. She had a gut feeling that it was.

"That's what I thought," there was that smile again, "I hadn't heard of the incident, so I thought I'd suss it out. Turns out, both of those guys work at Cheyenne Mountain. Which, as I understand, is where you work. Deep space radar telemetry?"

"If that's what my file says," she shrugged.

"Huh," he nodded, "you used to work for the Department of Aerospace? Right?" He leaned back in his chair.

Sam gave no verbal reply, but sent a glare his way.

"I did a bit of digging. What were their names...? Jason Wells, that was one. Senior Airmen Wells. He was in Security Forces. Doctor Leslie Dawson was the other one."

Sam clenched her teeth at the sound of her friend's name. Unfortunately, the Detective didn't miss the sudden change in her demeanour, though he made no comment.

"She was your assistant at the Department of Aerospace. I'm guessing that didn't change when you both moved to NORAD. I gotta wonder why an SF and a physicist died while studying the wonders of deep space," he tried to smile politely, as if his curiosity was completely innocent. Sam wanted to hit him.

"Maybe you could let me talk to your boss. He could give me an explanation. You've got a General running NORAD. Former Special Forces, I believe."

"I wouldn't know. But if that's true, I wouldn't cross him. You won't get far."

"Really? I'd like to meet him. You work in a research facility. The military has its own laws, but surely someone will notice two deaths. If the appropriate precaution hasn't been taken, then maybe someone should step in and insist some action be taken against the man responsible for their safety. Don't you think?"

"Stop it..."

Sam even went so far as to visualise her fist connecting with his jaw, until a hand slamming on the table startled them both. She followed the arm, covered by a cream jacket up to a familiar face. Jack O'Neill. For once, she was thankful it was him that seemed to have rescued her from the emotional turmoil of answering the Detective's questions.

"You're in my seat, bud," the General stared at Detective Shanahan. Pete, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased to see Jack. Sam remained silent. If the General could get this guy to leave, she'd go along with whatever lie he told.

"General Jack O'Neill, I presume?"

"Brigadier General," Jack growled. The two men sized each other up. "Samantha isn't at liberty to talk about her work. Time to get moving, Detective."

It entirely escaped Sam that Jack was deliberately giving the Detective the wrong impression. He intended to make Pete believe he had much more invested in the good Doctor than their work. Luckily, Shanahan believed the lie. Pete rose from the chair, carefully adjusting the collar of his shirt.

"I dunno what goes on in that mountain, but people are gonna ask questions," he looked down at Sam, "Doctor."

Jack and Sam watched the man leave and as soon as he was out of sight, Sam let out a sigh of relief and began to rub her temple. Her headache was worse now. The General eyed the now vacant chair, to which Sam nodded an invitation. He sat down and - despite her headache - she was actually glad for his company.

"I was about ready to hit him," she muttered as she kneaded her neck with her hands.

"Well... if you intend to commit violent acts when someone asks you a question, I won't ask if you're alright," the General smirked. Smart ass.

"If you did, I would say I'm fine," he nodded in understanding, "But thank you."

Jack smiled warmly, sending a shiver through Sam's body.

"Likewise."

Sam looked up at the General and found sincere gratitude. And there, just for a moment, something clicked. Something important. Something truly essential. And with that spark, a swell of emotions brewed in her stomach. When she first laid eyes on her new boss, he was like a set of armour: cold, strong and completely unyielding. Who knew there was a knight underneath?

"I thought I was the only one that knew about this place," he brought her out of her reverie.

"I'm sorry?"

"Agia's. You come here often or just stopping in?" he waved his hand to their surroundings.

"Oh! Um... Yes. I come here sometimes. Usually on Sunday afternoons. I just needed to get out for a while. I'm leaving for Nashville tomorrow." She played with the binding of her book. "Why are you here? No offense General, but I didn't take you for the coffee shop kind."

He chuckled. "What kind _did_ you take me for?" She stammered for an answer she couldn't give. "It's quiet. I'm not likely to run into anyone I know. Although today seems to be an exception. That kind of works out well. I was hoping to catch you before you left. Or I left."

"You're leaving?" her eyebrows arched in worry. She didn't want him to leave.

"I'm heading to DC a few days. I'll be back Wednesday. Hammond can hold the fort. "

"Oh..." she replied quietly. She glanced around the coffee shop, looked across the aisle. She stared at the man sitting there, reading a book.


	2. The Linguist

Chapter 2

"Carter, what are you looking at?" The General asked.

"Look over there, General." She said, nodding toward the man who was engrossed in his book across the aisle.

"Okay…. What am I looking at?" He quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Did Catherine ever tell you about the linguist she tried to get into the program?"

"Jackson? Wasn't that his name? The guy that turned her down, delaying the project a few years?"

"Yeah. I have his file, and from what I've seen, he's sitting across from us at the table over there."

"How can you tell, Carter?"

"Well General, Catherine gave me his file; I have it right here," She reached down and fished through the bag at her feet, bring out a manila folder, took out some photos, and slid them across to him. Jack frowned at them, then at the man across from them, comparing the two.

"Okay. That looks like him, so what?"

"We should try again."

"Excuse me, doctor? _Try again_? What does that mean?"

"Catherine used to tell me she regretted not bringing an Air Force officer to that meeting. Said it might have convinced him more that she wasn't just pulling his leg. We have that; _you._ Not only are you a military officer, you might be his boss if he accepts. And, I have some writing for him to translate, an appetizer, if you will." She winked at him, then asked him for sunglasses and his black gloves. He gave them to her, and she put them on, looking like a black ops soldier, except for her long hair, which she swept back and secured in a tight bun. She nodded to him, and walked over to Jackson, sitting across the table from him.

"Dr. Daniel Jackson, I presume?" Daniel was interrupted from his book on ancient Mayan language by a blonde woman, who nodded to him coolly and sat down across the table.

"Why do you care?" He grumbled, eager to get back to his book. Sam shrugged and cut to the chase.

"Just over a year ago, you were approached by a Dr. Catherine Langford about doing translations."

He groaned and shut the book. "Why the hell would you care? They were just making fun of me."

"Indeed? Why do you say that?"

"Let's see, an old lady comes up to me and tells me she needs to talk to me, right after laughing her ass off at me during my lecture. Why do you think?" He watched the strange woman smirk and pull something out of a manila folder she held in her hand.

"What does this say?" She pushed the paper toward him. It was a picture of some hieroglyphs_._ He grunted, looked at them and said, automatically, "Lord Ra, king of the gods."

The woman took off her glasses, fixing him with a piercing stare, her blue eyes dead serious.

"We still need you, Doctor."

"_We?_ Who the hell is _we_?" Understanding dawned on him, and he glared at her."You're with the old lady? Oh, for crying out loud!"

Jack had had enough. No stupid archeologist was going to talk to _his _head of physics and engineering like that.

He walked over and said, "Listen buddy, we are offering you a job. You gonna take it or not?"

"General!" Sam groaned, rubbing her temples and hoping to make it look she didn't want him over there.

"_General?_ You work with the military?

"Yes, she does. I don't see why she thinks we need you, but apparently you speak over twenty languages or something."

"What about it?"

The general took a seat next to the woman and leaned in. His voice lowered.

"What if, theoretically, we told you your theories were true?"

Daniel stood up. "I don't have time for this. I wish you people would stop mocking me!"

"Sit down, _doctor_" The command presence and anger clear in the General's voice, dropping Daniel back into his chair. "You _doctors_ are all the same; present astrophysicist excluded, of course," he nodded to the woman with him, and she smiled at him. "The rest of you are all too busy burying your head in the sand to wake up and see the sunrise! We're offering you a job, _doctor_. Will you take it or not? Last chance to change your mind. Here, have some more hieroglyphs." He slid the pictures from the mission to the good doctor, along with a business card with a number on it.

"Oh, and while you have a heyday with those pictures we gave you, never forget that two people died to take them so we could give them to you." He got up, hauled the younger woman up with him grabbed their bags from under the table across the aisle, and was gone, leaving the coffee shop.

Daniel looked at the hieroglyphs, most of which spoke of Ra and how great he was. Then his eyes widened when he translated a line of text that said, _Through the Chappa'ai our lord Ra comes, great pyramids are his doorway. He brings all other minor gods to kneel before him, even Kronos and Freya. _Hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt mentioning a Greek god and a Norse goddess in the same sentence? This could be very, very big. He looked at the card. It said,

_Dr. Catherine Langford, Archeologist_

It had her number and address. He groaned and thought about the striking blonde and her military boss. He hoped he knew what he was getting himself into. He took a deep breath, left the coffee shop, taking his book and everything with him, pulled out his phone, stared at it for about a minute, then took another deep breath and, walking down the street, he called the number and listened to it ring.


	3. Success

Chapter 3

_0902h_  
><em>Thursday, 16th February 1996<em>  
><em>Level Nineteen, SGA<em>

Sam started as someone crashed through the door of her laboratory. She looked up, expecting to see Leslie, but her heart sank when she remembered Leslie's death. It was Catherine. Catherine ran over to her and cried,

"Samantha Carter, however did you do it?" Sam smiled a bit and looked at her friend, confused.

"What did I do?"

"Dr. Jackson called and told me he was in! How did you convince him?"

"That's funny. I saw him in the coffee shop, Agia's, I had seen the General there and was talking with him when I looked across the aisle and saw Jackson. I went over and tried to get him to join. O'Neill came over and gave him a talking to, and we left some pictures with him, along with your card. I had no idea he would actually call you!"

"Well, he signed the agreement and will start work on Monday." Catherine beamed. "We can finally get this program going right!" She cried. Sam smiled and hugged the older woman.


	4. First day of work

Chapter 4

_0824h_

_Monday, 20th February 1996_

_Elevator, SGA_

Daniel Jackson walked into Cheyenne Mountain. This place was _really_ top secret. He had had to sign in and give legal documentation at the surface that he was really Dr. Jackson. He stepped out of the elevator and recognized the woman from the coffee shop. He stopped her.

"Excuse me, where is the General's office?"

"Hi, Jackson! I'll bring you! It's just down here! Follow me." She turned around and he followed her.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced. My name is Carter, Dr. Samantha Carter. Here it is. Right in through here and to your left." He thanked her and she smiled at him with a bright, excited smile.

He rapped at the door. He heard the gruff bark to come and he opened the door.

Jack looked up and saw the linguist from the coffee shop.

"I'm here to report for my first day, General."

"Good for you. Go find Catherine. She should be in her office. She'll have work for you to do."

"Okay."

Jack dismissed the linguist with a wave of his hand.

Daniel left, a bit flabbergasted by the way the general had acted and asked someone where Dr. Langford's office was. He whirled however, when he heard a voice behind him.

"My office is right next door to your new one, doctor." The older woman smiled warmly at him. "Let me show you." She led him down to the elevator and hit the button for the 17th floor. They went down and she said,

"Do you have anything else? We can get you quarters on the base if you need somewhere to stay."

"I have my apartment, thank you."

She laughed and said, "Well, it is a standard here. Everyone has living quarters on the base."

The elevator stopped and let them off. She led him to a room that was completely bare, except for some shelves, a desk, a chair, and a computer.

"This is your office. My office is immediately to your right and our other expert in Linguistics is to your left." He thanked her and she left.

He put down his bags and sighed._ '_Well, it has plenty of shelf space.' He thought. 'I might just be able to crash here instead of in my apartment, if I really do get quarters. That would save me money on rent.'


	5. Breakfast

Chapter 5

_0645h_

_Thursday, 23rd February 1996_

_SGA Commissary_

Sam looked up from her coffee in time to watch General O'Neill stroll in. he grabbed some cereal, sat down next to her, and started eating.

"What are you doing here, Carter?" He asked around his fruit loops. Sam shrugged, looking at him.

"Just catching up on some work, sir, nothing big; still need to figure out the right ratios for the size of the iris. Jackson translated the rest of the text. Catherine came and told me last night that she would have them on your desk today." She tried to stifle a yawn, not having realized just how tired she was when she was working to realize she needed sleep. O'Neill quirked an eyebrow at her.

"Did you pull another all nighter?" He asked, all ready having a good idea what the answer was.

"Well, sort of. I dozed off for an hour, but yeah, pretty much." He smirked at her, trying not to laugh at her. She saw what he was doing and scowled.

"Doctor, you should not like work _this_ much!" He said in a mock upset tone. She laughed and said,

"Well, it's hard not to when I've got such a great boss." _Stop!_ She reprimanded herself. _You aren't supposed to be acting like a besotted teenager!_ He smirked and looked at her.

"Come with me, doctor." He stood up and waited for her. She finished her coffee and stood up with him. He took her elbow and guided her out the commissary to the elevator. He hit the button for the fifth level and realization dawned on her.

"I'm fine, Sir. I don't need sleep."

"Carter, you look exhausted. I'm not a medical doctor and I can still tell that." The elevator stopped and he took her elbow, just to make sure she came with him and didn't dart to her laboratory or somewhere else.

"General, I'm fine. I can handle it." He just took her to his back up room. He stopped outside the door.

"Carter! You need sleep! That is obvious! I don't want any stupid mistakes because you were too tired to think straight! Now, if you keep trying to fight me on this, were going to med bay and I will get Doctor Frasier to sedate you. Is that understood?" He looked at her for a long moment until she sighed and looked away.

"Fine, I'll sleep."

"Thank you, doctor. We will call you if there is an emergency." He opened the door and let her in. She walked in and saw the sparse quarters. She went to the bed and collapsed. The last thing she saw before sleep overtook her was the General turning out the lights and closing the door. Jack went to her laboratory and put a sign there. It read,

_Doctor Carter is not available. If you have something you wish to discuss with her, speak to the general and he will decide if it is worth bothering her or not._

He hoped no one would come with an emergency big enough to disrupt her. The poor doctor looked like she needed some sleep. He went to his office and found a folder sitting on his desk with the translations from Dr. Jackson. He sifted through it while working on some paperwork. He sighed. _It's going to be a long day. _He thought, resigning himself to endless paperwork.


	6. Ghost Stories

O'Neill looked at the stack of reports in front of him and groaned. _Why the sudden flood of ghost stories?_ He had been sitting at his desk for the past two and a half hours just reading through reports of strange things seen out of the corner of the eye, little things going bump in the night. He rubbed his eyes, grabbed the top report off the stack, and read it.

INCIDENT REPORT

NAME: CHARLES KAWALSKI

DESCRIPTION: I WAS IN THE HALL ON LEVEL 7 WHEN I HEARD FOOTSTEPS. THE HALL WAS BRIGHTLY LIT, AND I SAW NO ONE IN FRONT OF ME, SO I TURNED AROUND, BUT THERE WAS NOONE BEHIND ME EITHER. I CONTINUED ON. THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS PERSISTED, IN ADDITION TO MY OWN. WHEN IT FINALLY STOPPED, I HAD ALREADY REACHED THE ELEVATOR. WHEN I GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR, I HEARD WHAT SOUNDED LIKE A TEENAGED GIRL GIGGLING.

GENERAL O'NEILL, SIR, OFF THE RECORD, SIR, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? I HEARD OTHERS DISCUSSING SIMILAR REPORTS. WHAT THE HELL IS WITH THESE GHOST ENCOUNTERS?

Jack threw the report down, infuriated. _What the hell is with everyone?_ Suddenly, he heard a strange, girly giggling. He whirled his eyes around his office, planning on chewing out the perpetrator who had snuck into his office while he was reading. What he saw was the worst thing he could imagine; nothing. He simply saw his office, as it had always been; no one else was around. He groaned, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the infuriating sound to stop.

It didn't. If anything, it got louder. Suddenly, it abruptly cut out, followed with a little sigh. He looked up and into a very familiar face.


	7. Explanations

"Kinzi, is that you? Where the hell have you been for the past nine years? Everyone thinks you're dead!"

His eyes moved from her face to what should have been the rest of her body. All he saw was a glowing white light. It framed her face and floated above the ground. _This explains Hammond's ghost story_. He thought. Hammond had reported seeing the smiling face of his beloved granddaughter, who had disappeared right after she graduated from high school. They never saw her again, and no one ever found her body. They buried an empty casket. Suddenly, everything fell into place. It all made sense, most of the ghost stories were brought to light; even Daniel's complaint against his neighbors when the room he said the jazz being played late at night came from wasn't assigned to anyone. The blonde teenage girl people reported seeing out of the corner of their eyes. The bizarre incident Dr. Frasier reported when she was in the bathroom. She reported sitting on the toilet when a woman struck up a conversation in which she deftly debated the finer points of Jazz. When Frazier expressed how impressed she was and asked how she knew so much, the woman said she had played Bari Sax in her High School Jazz Band. Nothing notable there; Janet herself had played jazz trumpet in high school. Except when she opened the door, there was no one there. She had continued the conversation, but the stalls were all open and empty. She was alone in the bathroom.

O'Neill had dismissed this as another ghost story, but with this strange creature in front of him, he realized one major thing that had never jumped out at him before; _the strange ghost had said she'd played Bari Sax in jazz band. Kinzi had played Bari Sax in jazz band in high school._

As all this dawned on him, the creature in front of him changed. The white light disappeared, almost completely blocked out by her body, but not like she had been when she graduated. She looked like she had lost almost fifty pounds; the girl who suddenly appeared from the mysterious light was completely healthy and fit. The only indication of extra energy that needed still to be expelled was a bit of glow in her hair, giving it a silver sparkle; almost as though the white light was not completely gone.

"Not dead, Uncle Jack. I was kidnapped by a strange old man. He was crazy, or so I thought. He was constantly ranting and raving about Egypt and hieroglyphs and stuff. He also mentioned something he called 'ascension' a couple of times. Asked him what that meant and he said it was where the human body evolves so much that it turns to pure energy. I laughed him off, thinking he was completely off his rocker. He let me go, and I wandered around, finding that I was growing at least one new power every day. I continued meditating, but something inside said I couldn't go home yet. Suddenly, when I was meditating, though my eyes were still closed, I found I could see. Something in me wanted to see Grandpa again, so I went to his house. And do you know what I saw, Uncle Jack?" She asked, choking on unshed tears. "I saw grandpa visiting grandma in the hospital. She had a stroke and I couldn't be there for her! I wanted to die, but that bastard that did this to me made me immortal!" She choked, then started sobbing. Reacting to years of uncle instinct, Jack immediately rose and held her tight, marveling that she was solid, considering that she had reappeared out of white light. She looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

"It made me so angry. I wanted to kill someone." Her voice trailed off, and she whispered, "So I did."

"You what?"

"Remember that boy in my science class? The one who was always making fun of me and my friends?" He nodded "Well, I was wandering around. It was a stormy night. Lots of lightning. I had seen him picking on Aimee earlier." Jack thought of Kinzi's best friend. "I was so mad, I just closed my eyes, made it so I could see him with them closed, and punched him. In that punch I poured my anger at myself for not being there for grandma, my hatred for him for what he had put me through in high school, and my anger that he was still doing it to Aimee." Her voice, having risen in anger, fell again. She whispered, "They found his body the next day in the dark alleyway where I had punched him. They classified it as a lightning strike. Told his parents it was a freak accident that the lightning bolt packed enough punch to kill him. But I know better. I watched them mourn him, Uncle Jack. And I mourned for me. I didn't know where to go. Aunt Sam has always been there for me, but how can I possibly explain… that? I wanted to go home. Oh Jack, I cried everyday for God to take me out of this horrible mess and met me go home. But I knew I couldn't. So, I wandered. I followed Aimee to college, watched her become the Vet she always wanted to be. I watched her fall in love with a Linguistics Major. I was there at her wedding, and wept with her when I couldn't be her maid of honor! I was there, smiling down as she had her first baby, a little girl, and I was delighted when she named that raven-haired beauty after me, Kinzi Britney…" She mused. He let her go and cleared his throat.

"Kinzi, your grandpa needs to know you're alive. So does Sam, and your grandma." She sighed.

"I know. Will you call him in for me?" He nodded and did so, watching as she disappeared and reappeared, fresh and clean, smiling; no sign anywhere that she had just been crying, the only change was that her hair had slightly less silver glow.


End file.
